WORKHUB (not very exciting title…) Context: With the spread of new technologies more people are working digitally, carrying out complicated work lives just from their computer, without the fixed infrastructure of a dedicated office space. For workers this means the potential that they can carry out their work in a more dynamic and enabling balance with their domestic responsibilities. For companies it means that they can be free to use space more creatively, not just tied to a normative office with a range of fixed facilities, but moving between spaces as their projects require. Brief: A public space to work. The workhub is intended to offer a new office typology that could be suitable for established businesses, startup companies, and individuals working on a self employed basis. It offers a range of office accommodation from open plan work spaces for individual working, to spaces where people can meet in different sized groups, and with different levels of privacy. These spaces are available at a spectrum of occupation levels, from permanent occupation for an established company who needs a base from which to operate their business; to semi permanently for small companies who need short term facilities as their requirements develop; to short term uses, for a local mother who needs somewhere to carry out a few hours work while their child sleeps, or a group of people who need to hold a meeting near Euston station. Integrated within these spaces are a full range of support facilities – printing shops, computer/IT maintenance. These include facilities aimed at improving the working conditions for the users – cafe, library, exhibition space, swimming pool and ballroom. These support facilities extend to include programmes to enable different user groups to carry out their work – a laundry and childcare facilities. Funding: A range of funding options will be required, depending on the type of use, with a significant part funded by the council with the building offering the amenities of a local library. AGENDA of issues to be tackled through project Layered Programming: To test what might be suitable strategies to combine programmes. It can be two programmes in same space, or two programmes next to each other, with what kind of connection, or programmes in same space but scheduled at different times. Crucial to this is to think how the building can enable different kinds of use, so that the users are able to understand, from a ‘gesture’ in the building perhaps, how it can be occupied. Responsibilities and Freedoms in shared space: Related to the difficulties of layering programmes is the question of how you make places that are open to the public, shared between different people and all their different needs and concerns. How can places accommodate difference, and the possibility that there are conflicting uses…
Identifying User Community: Need to talk to someone… Working Methods (and their polemic): 1. Look at existing examples, and plans, for new public buildings, like mediatechs, or culturehouses… Specifically how do you manage public ownership and create openness and accessibility 2. Design desk, room, building, city presence. Picking nice easy site. Portfolio structure: Ch 1 – Retrofit for Euston office building to increase capacities for office workers (combining six designs) Ch 2 – New styles of working, and vulnerable community of people working without specific space to do so, create potential for new typology Ch3 – An example design on real site. Problems: No individual community member identified…